illarraza wrote:Nichiren teaches that merely a tablet [toba] engraved with Daimoku in the forest will save the suffering animals.

Source?

“.... because on its face you displayed the Seven Characters “Namu Myoho renge kyo”, when the north wind blows the scaly tribe (fish) of the Southern Sea, meeting that wind, will leave the sufferings of the great sea and when the east wind comes the birds and deer of the western mountains, having had that wind touch their bodies, shall escape the Way of the Beasts and they shall be reborn in the Inner Cloister of Tushita. How much more the human beings who have a following joy (zuiki) for that sotoba, touching it to their hands and seeing it with their eyes! Think that it is like the moon’s reflection when the water is clear and the reverberation when they strike the drum that by the merit of that sotoba the departed parents shall also illuminate the Pure Land like the sun and moon of heaven and the person of filial nurture as well as his wife and children shall have a lifespan of a hundred and twenty years in the present world and in the after life shall go to the Pure Land of the Spiritual Mountain (ryozen jodo). Henceforth on subsequent sotobas you should display the Title (Daimoku) of the Hokekyo.” (Nakaoki nyudo goshosoku, STN, v. 2, 1718-1719)

PorkChop wrote:Nice catch! Namik's lost a lot of weight since then tho.
Hip hop's mostly about putting on a persona, but I could probably see him getting in the face of a skinhead.
For the most part, as long as you're cool with him, he's cool with you.

In the event of a collapse, my wife's Okinawan & my kid's half.
My kid can pass for hispanic for sure and I doubt they'd be head hunting asians in the wake of a collapse...
Can't really see 3/4s of the people I know & hang out with suddenly turning on me just coz I'm white...
I wouldn't think so given the fact that we're already a minority in this town, so it'd be redundant...
Who knows...
Maybe we'll just run away to go live with my in-laws.

That video's pretty disgusting.

Sorry for taking so long to respond. I definitely didn't intend to leave the conversation on that note, and definitely no disrespect intended to your friend Namik. (Though if I had to be compared to anyone, I would rather it was to legendary Samurai warrior like Miyamoto Musashi, featured in the picture above.) That's good music.

So I think the discussion may have gotten a bit off course in trying to prove a point that is actually subsidiary in relation to the main topic. The idea, really, is that things can get ugly when a society is in disarray. Just like a person suffering from malnutrition might see an old health issue flare up as the body is no longer able to compensate, it is common to see old animosities flare up in hard times. The point I'm making is not that the animosities should be dwelt upon, but to recognize the pattern, the dynamic, involved and be able to consider what factors would have an effect in a certain situation.

But yes, the video is pretty bad. What's worse is that quite a bit of that guy's stuff is from before the internet really caught on, which makes you think a bit about who would want to add a video to his lecture and, more importantly, why they would want to. Ichinen-sanzen teaches us that each of the ten worlds are contained within the the other worlds as a potentiality. Any state of existence can become another when the conditions, internal or external, are right. One of the things that I worry about is national unity and how Americans now define themselves as a people. Our politics seem to be getting more partisan, less rational and overall somewhat disconnected from reality. Once the 3 poisons become collectively pronounced, any nation will begin to decline.

Consider all of the people who dislike (or even hate) Obama simply because he's black--and then think about all of the people who are staunch supporters for the very same reason. That alone should tell you that America's priorities aren't quite right.

I think a good way to deal with the national unity question is to come to terms with the fact it never existed nor will it ever, we are too big, and we should fracture up into smaller countries. The Union is not worth jack and i bet no one in this generation is really willing to fight or have their kids fight to preserve it.

sorry to go off topic, there was brief talk of secessionist people on this thread already, and i was just thinking about this getting my flu shot today.